Gimme Some Sugar

Blog Roll

Thursday, September 05, 2013

Raw Story:
A Fox News guest on Thursday argued that hungry students would have a
“teaching moment” if they were refused access in the cafeteria line to
school lunches because their parents hadn’t properly filled out the
right paperwork.

During a segment on Fox & Friends, therapist and school
counselor Thomas Kersting told host Gretchen Carlson that he approved of
a New Jersey school district’s plan to reportedly “throw the meal away” if kids didn’t have enough money to pay for lunch.

“I agree with the superintendent,” he said. “I think it’s a little
harsh. You know, I don’t think they’re going to throw the food out right
in front of the kid and embarrass the kid.”

Kersting explained that some parents had allegedly told their
children to accept the lunches before the paperwork had been completed
and filed, and so the Willingboro School District had decided not to
feed students unless their parents had signed the proper forms and been
enrolled in the Free and Reduced Lunch program.

So no lunch for you until your mom has filled out the proper 27B/6. If we have children actually eating without
the proper forms on file, why that’s a short step away from anarchy.
It’s much more efficient to simply throw the lunch away, because… Well,
never you mind about the because. Because central processing says so.

Kersting continued to explain how this was the smartest thing ever in
the whole wide world. “We have more food than any other nation. You
know, no kid is going to starve,” he went merrily on. “You know, if one
day a kid doesn’t have lunch, right, maybe that’s a teaching moment when
that kid doesn’t have lunch. That may sound harsh saying that, but
we’ve got to get people to start being responsible for themselves.”

The fact that “we have more food than any other nation” is
meaningless if we’re throwing away food, rather than letting people eat
it. You wonder if this guy understands that eating isn’t some sort of
pleasure reserved for the deserving, but is rather a necessity to, you
know, live and stuff. And that “teaching moment” stuff? That’s the sort
of “let them eat cake” shit that would’ve cost you your head in the
French Revolution. Marie Antoinette here only thinks he’s making a
compelling argument.

But really, conservatives are all about mindless, faceless
bureaucracies these days. They’re making people jump through
bureaucratic hoops to vote, to have access to an entirely legal
abortion, and now to eat. When conservatives complain about bureaucrats,
their really complaining that the privileged aren’t n some sort of
express lane around all the bureaucratic BS they expect everyone else to
navigate through like a rat in a maze trying to get to the cheese.

If a big banker needs a little government oversight, that’s freakin’
Big Government Run Amok. If a kid misses a meal because his mom didn’t
sign the proper 27B/6, well that’s a teaching moment. Please observe as
we dispose of the Sloppy Joe in the proper government approved
receptacle, in the government approved manner.